OCR Text |
Show INTRODUCTION The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Industrial Technologies (OIT) has shifted from a "technology push" focus to an industry "market pull" focus, adopting a strategy termed the "Industries of the Future". A s part of this strategy, OIT facilitates a process in which the industries develop for themselves a strategic "vision" of their desired future, and a "technology roadmap" to help achieve this vision. This process enables each industry to identify and prioritize its collective technology needs. OIT's Combustion Program has chosen to use this s a m e "visioning" and "roadmapping" strategy to formulate its future direction and research course. For industrial combustion, three sets of visions and roadmaps will be established, one each for combustion/burners, boilers and furnaces/heaters. By addressing these industry segments, this approach recognizes the close link between heat source and heat sink. Each vision will specify the industry's key technical and market performance targets and discuss the principal technical, market, business, regulatory and societal drivers potentially impacting the future of the industry. In so doing, the vision will set strategic technology objectives and identify the major challenges to be faced. The use of the vision and roadmapping process represents a contemporary strategy being adopted by industry and has been or will be used by organizations as diverse as Motorola and the Electric Power Research Institute. There are a number of reasons for using this type of integrated technology planning approach. One is that the vision and especially the roadmap lay out a whole research plan, showing how an industry can move from its current technological status to a desired future status. And indeed, a roadmap is not unlike an architect's plan or blueprint in that it shows how different sectors can contribute. With a complete plan, research can be coordinated among such diverse groups as corporations, research institutes, universities and government laboratories. And, in these times of very tight budgets, the opportunity is presented to coordinate research funding among different public and private funding groups as well, allowing D O E and other Federal agencies to align their resources to best meet industry's needs. This approach also identifies technology gaps, illustrating where efforts must be focused if industry's goals are to be realized. The first step of this approach is to formulate an industry vision. The vision for an industry describes the desired technological (including energy and environme^*?!) and market status of that industry at a future point in time. The year chosen by most of the "Industries of the Future" is 2020. The vision is formulated by representatives of the industry and its major customers. The second step is to formulate a "technology roadmap" that identifies the steps needed to get from the current industry status to that identified by the vision. The roadmap identifies the industry's current technological and market status, barriers preventing it from achieving its goals, and technological options and pathways for overcoming these barriers. It lists the technical requirements and set technical priorities thereby establishing a research agenda of prioritized R, D & D needs. In short, the 2 |